Overclocking and Conclusion
Overclocking
To give a feel for the overclocking performance potential of the Z270X-Gaming 8 motherboard, we attempted to push it to known CPU-supported performance parameters with minimal tweaking. At the stock base clock speed of 100Mhz, we pushed the CPU to 5.1GHz with a 4.8GHz ring bus and 4000MHz memory speeds. This was done at a 1.34V CPU voltage and a 1.35V memory voltage with all other values left at default settings. All overclocking sessions remained stable for over 4hrs. System stability was tested running the AIDA64 stability test in conjunction with EVGA's OC Scanner X graphical benchmark running at 1280×1024 resolution and 8x MSAA in stress test mode. Note that 8GB (2 x 4GB) of Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4-4000 memory modules were used for the overclocking tests.
100MHz Base Clock Stats with 5.1GHZ CPU speed
Note that this is is meant only as a quick preview of the board's performance potential. With more time to tweak the settings to a greater extent, pushing to a higher base clock and ring bus speed may have been achievable, in addition to an overnight stability run without issue.
Pricing
As of March 31, the GIGABYTE Z270X-Gaming 8 motherboard was available at Amazon.com for $399.99 with Prime shipping. The board was also available from Newegg.com for $399.99.
Conclusion
The GIGABYTE Z270X-Gaming 8 motherboard is a solid product for GIGABYTE, offering a mix of familiar features with a slew of new features to give the board an edge. Further, the board is among the launch vehicles for GIGABYTE's new AORUS brand, a gamer-friendly brand looking to differentiate itself from the competition. GIGABYTE balances the board design well with a unique aesthetic and a very diverse offering of storage solutions. Its performance falls in-line with other boards of the same class and its overclocking potential leaves nothing to sneer at. While the price might seem a bit high, the Bitpower designed CPU VRM cooler begins to justify its price premium. The included Bitspower block is a hybrid cooling solution, usable as an air cooler or as part of a DYI liquid loop. The block itself has a nickel-plate copper bottom plate and an acrylic top plate forming the liquid channel for a nice look and of the high quality design that enthusiasts have come to expect from Bitspower.
There were a few oddities in the board's design, the biggest being the bandwidth splitting between the first three PCIe x16 slots. If a card is populated in the tertiary PCIe x16 slot, the bandwidth in the secondary slot is automatically reduced to x4 because the second and third slots share bandwidth. This could become problematic if you wanted to run a tri-card build with this board. For the price of the board, GIGABYTE could have integrated a PLX bridge chip to add additional bandwidth for the PCIe x16 slots.
We will be taking a more in-depth look into this board and its features in the near future, which should uncover even more strengths with this board and its new branding than was discussed in this preview article.
Strengths
- Stock performance
- Overclocking performance
- Board aesthetics, layout, and design
- UEFI BIOS design and usability
- Integrated Bitspower nickel-plated copper hybrid cooler for CPU VRM cooling
- Storage offerings – dual M.2 ports, SATA Express ports, SATA ports, and U.2 ports
- Network offerings – dual GigE ports and 2×2 802.11ac WiFi adapter ports
- PCIe x1 slot 1 usable with dual slot video card seated in primary PCIe x16 slot
- Configurable RGB LEDs using RGB Fusion through both UEFI and Windows app
- RGB illuminated rear shield panel
- Dual RGBW headers
- Inclusion of high bandwidth NVIDIA SLI adapter
- Integrated 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 support
Weaknesses
- CMOS battery placement
- No PCIe x1 port to right of primary PCIe x16 slot
- Reduced bandwidth of secondary PCIe x16 slot to x4 with card populating PCIe x16 tertiary slot
- Price
